Music Reviews : 17th-Century Delights

The Arcadian Academy, members of the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, presented a cherishable program of mostly 17th-Century music on period instruments in the Crystal Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel on Monday. It was a high point of this season of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series sponsored by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College.

The ensemble, comprising harpsichordist Nicholas McGegan (Philharmonia’s music director), violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock and Katherine Kyme, cellist David Bowles and lutenist David Tayler, served as accomplished guides through works by such rarely encountered composers as Marco Uccellini, whose dashing “Aria sopra’ la Romanesca” opened the program with sufficient spirit to revive the most torpid listener in the very warm auditorium; Salamone Rossi; Antonio Ferrabosco (an ethereal Pavan for solo lute), and Nicola Matteis’ Suite in E minor, fragments of virtuoso wallpaper, bursting into inspiration in its final movements.

Even more rewarding was the program’s second half, devoted to potent creations by English composers: Purcell, Locke and Handel.

Here, as throughout the evening, one was struck by the extraordinary skill of violinist Blumenstock.